Electric Vehicle Charging Strategy for Bedford Borough 2024 - 2027
Gullies
For people who want to charge their cars from their household electricity supply, one option could be a gully – a small covered channel running across the pavement that a charging cable can be run through. This can offer a way to get a cable from their property to their car safely, without trailing a cable across the pavement. Gullies are still quite a new product, and are still being developed and brought to market.
While gullies offer a possible solution to the lack of off-street parking, they do not solve every problem. On roads where people have to park on the street, spaces are not allocated, and there is often competition for spaces. If you have a gully but can't park outside your home, you can't use your gully to connect your EV to the charger. (But see below regarding shared charging platforms.)
The Government has announced a scheme to provide a £350 grant towards the cost of installing a chargepoint with a gully. This requires permission from the Council to modify the footway, which is part of the public highway. We will be conducting a trial of gullies in Bedford, starting this year. Anyone who applies for permission to install a gully will be considered for participation in this trial.
Other products are coming to the market that might offer solutions to the same problem, such as pop-up charging bollards that retract below the ground when not in use. These may be more expensive to install and come with a higher maintenance liability, but we will monitor developments of these options.
Shared charging platforms
Shared charging platforms such as CoCharger and JustCharge let people hire their home chargepoints out to other EV users. The homeowner and the platform both take a small fee, but the user gets to access EV charging at prices close to those of domestic electricity tariffs, which are often much cheaper than at public chargepoints.
These platforms could offer a solution to the problem of parking: if many houses on a street have gullies, and their chargepoints are available on a sharing platform, a driver could be able to charge cheaply even if they can't park outside their own home. However, levels of EV uptake will have to be much higher than today before gullies are available in large numbers via sharing platforms.
Shared platforms may also be the best solution for small villages where only a small number of properties – this may mean literally only one or two – lack off-street parking. Installing public chargepoints in the smallest settlements may be highly uneconomical, but EV ownership could still be practical if a few residents share their chargepoints.